Modality in music is special—‘special’ as in “distinct from non-musical senses of the term;” and ‘special’ as in “possessing a striking allure and freshness.”

Often enough, modality has also been confusing.

In this post, I’ll illustrate some basic points about the musical modes, focusing on a well-known Irish fiddle tune, Banish Misfortune, which exists in a couple of different modal variants.

Let’s start with the tune itself. I liked it so well that I decided to write a set of piano variations based upon it. Here’s a video of my setting—the ‘theme’ of the set of variations:

(To put in a shameless plug, you can buy the sheet music for my variations here. Click and scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Somewhat unusually, Banish Misfortune is a three-part tune (most traditional dance tunes have two parts.) Each part concludes with the same cadence figure—a melodic pattern that ends the phrase. (This is sometimes called “cadence rhyme.”) Here, it helps make very clear the three-part structure of the tune.

But as mentioned above, there is more than one version of this tune. That is not unusual in folk music; tunes are transmitted aurally, not primarily ‘fixed’ in written versions. Each player is free to add, simplify or vary the melody, and the result is that popular tunes can exist in numerous different versions. Banish Misfortune certainly fits that description.

The first version to be written down dates from 1850, when Edward Cronin’s performance was transcribed and published in a famous compendium of Irish tunes. That version is shown together with the one I used, with the ‘1850’ version on the upper staff. The transparent blue enclosures highlight the ‘cadence rhyme,’ which is present in both versions. (There are four enclosures, not three as you might expect, because in the Cronin version the ‘B’ part of the tune has two different endings.)

If you look carefully at the second version–yes, I know it’s awfully small!–you might notice something: the C-sharps are found only at the cadences—outside the blue boxes, only C–naturals are to be seen. Not in the 1850 version, though: in it, one finds C-sharps consistently.

That note—C-sharp versus C-natural—is the difference defining the different modes of these variants of the tune. The 1850 version is in D major, whereas the later version is in the modal scale we would call D Mixolydian. From a scalar perspective, one note is all it takes!

Here is a table illustrating the point for the three ‘major-like’ modes:

Name of Mode

Scale Degree Inflected

Mixolydian

7th lowered

Ionian

None

Lydian

4th raised

The “Ionian” mode’s scale does not differ from that of major keys—though theorists might differentiate between Ionian and major on other, more subtle, grounds. Mixolydian features a lowered 7th scale degree, as just illustrated by the C-naturals of the second version of Banish Misfortune. Lydian is defined by a raised 4th scale degree—the Cronin version could be converted to Lydian, for instance, by raising all the G-naturals to G-sharp.

It’s a bit strange, isn’t it? (And I don’t mean the cut-off last line–sorry about that.) The characteristically Irish melodic turns and rhythms assort oddly with a mode that is not at all typical of the genre.

The three ‘minor-like’ modes, like their counterparts tabulated above, can be listed in reference to a central mode, from which the other two differ by a single altered scale degree:

Name of Mode

Scale Degree Inflected

Dorian

6th raised

Aeolian

None

Phrygian

2nd lowered

Aeolian corresponds to the so-called ‘natural minor scale.’ Dorian—like Mixolydian, a fairly common mode in Western European folk music—differs by a raised sixth scale degree (relative to the Aeolian.) (Readers familiar with the well-known tune “Greensleeves” may possess an example of this: that tune is heard in both Dorian and Aeolian incarnations.) Phrygian—more ‘exotic’ to many listeners—features a lowered second scale degree.

These six modes, by the way, complete the catalog of the ‘authentic’ modes in the scheme of Heinrich Glarean (June 1488 – 28 March 1563), an important figure in the history of modality (and of music theory generally.) Here’s Holbein’s sketch of “Glareanus”:

There’s another way to look at the modes, though: one can envision them as rotations of a single set of tones. To put it another way, imagine the white keys on a piano, which give the notes A through G. Of those seven notes, one can then form seven distinct scales, simply by taking each note in turn as a central tone, or ‘final.’ Here’s a table illustrating this way of thinking about the modes:

Name of Mode

Final (“Starting tone”) and scale degree, relative to the major (Ionian) mode.

Locrian (not used, traditionally)

B (7th)

Aeolian (Natural Minor)

A (6th)

Mixolydian

G (5th)

Lydian

F (4th)

Phrygian

E (3rd)

Dorian

D (2nd)

Ionian (Major)

C (1st)

In a way, that approach is illustrated by the notation chosen above for the dual versions of Banish Misfortune. Some astute (and detail-oriented!) readers may have noticed that although the tune is in D, I used the key signature appropriate to G major.

That is quite normal for the Mixolydian version of the tune (lower staff.) Consider it from the perspective of G major. If G is ‘scale degree 1,’ then ‘scale degree 5’ would be D. And, according to the table above, it is ‘scale degree 5’ which forms the final of the Mixolydian scale.

Thus, D Mixolydian would usually be written with a key signature of one sharp.

Let’s turn back to the tunes themselves for a bit. A quick overview can be had by listening to the two played simultaneously. It’s not a particularly pleasant musical experience, it must be admitted—the modal clash between C and C# does sound quite sour —but the simultaneous presentation does rapidly highlight where and how the tunes diverge or coincide.

You can tell that the first section differs the most, while the second section is most similar—in fact, for much of the second section it sounds as if just one tune is playing. The third section occupies an intermediate place in this scheme.

I’ve illustrated that visually below. The green boxes highlight specific similarities of pitch or contour; the yellow-orange boxes identify a more subtle correspondence found between the ‘A’ sections of the tunes: for six successive downbeats, the two melodies form a dyad—a pair of pitches—from the tonic triad.

I hesitate to make too much of that relationship, but it does suggest a static tonic ‘harmony’ underlying this section of both melodies. (Traditional performances would likely have been unaccompanied.) The same cannot be said of harmonies of the other two sections of the tune, which seem to imply non-tonic harmonies. (The 1850 version actually states a dominant (A major) triad by arpeggiating it in measure 20.)

There’s an irony here: a modern listener might tend to perceive the modal version of the tune as more ‘primal,’ older, while the 1850 version seems somewhat conventional. The reality is different: though I don’t know when the earliest Mixolydian version of Banish Misfortune dates from, it is said that the popularity of versions such as the one I used (and present above) dates only from the 1960s, when the renowned Irish band The Chieftains recorded it!

If I’m going to promulgate “What Would Johann Do?” as a musical parlor game, I can’t very well ignore the significance of March 21st, can I?

(If you’re curious–maybe you might even decide to play, it’s never too late–just check out ‘WWJD’ in the archives in the left sidebar.)

Leipzieg honors JS Bach, by making him look as stern as possible. Photo courtesy zarafa and wikimedia commons.

Anyway, I’m celebrating with a favorite and a poll.

First, the favorite: my favorite Bach composition is the second Brandenburg concerto, BWV 1047, in F major. (Hey, I’m a trumpet player–I have obligations to keep up here.)

It’s the second in a series of 6 concerti gross which Bach used, essentially, as an (unsuccessful) job application. On March 24, 1721, Bach wrote to the Margrave of Brandenburg:

As I had the good fortune a few years ago to be heard by Your Royal Highness, at Your Highness’s commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the little talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking Leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honour me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have in accordance with Your Highness’s most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments; begging Your Highness most humbly not to judge their imperfection with the rigor of that discriminating and sensitive taste, which everyone knows Him to have for musical works, but rather to take into benign Consideration the profound respect and the most humble obedience which I thus attempt to show Him.

(The rather fawning tone is characteristic of the time, not of Bach’s personality.)

But the Margrave apparently lacked the requisite instrumentation; at any rate, the indications are that the pieces were never performed at his Court. In 1734, following the Margrave’s death, the manuscripts were sold for the equivalent of a few dollars. Thus, these concertos, perhaps the finest of all concerti gross, remained almost completely without contemporary influence. (It is possible that they were heard at Cothen, where Bach was employed; it has been shown that the available forces there did match the scoring.)

The manuscripts were rediscovered in 1849 by musician and Bach scholar Siegried Dehn, and were published the following year–the first known performance with something like the original orchestration came in 1898 with trumpeter Theo Charlier. Since then ‘the Brandenburgs’ have been recorded very often, with at least 75 recordings listed on the “J.S. Bach home page.”

The Second Brandenburg is a cheerful, even ebullient, work. It follows the normal 3-movement pattern, in which a central slow movement is flanked by quick outer movements. Like any normal concerto grosso, the Second Brandenburg features musical forces divided into two groups: the orchestra (‘ripieno’) and a group of ‘solo’ instruments (‘concertino.’) The concertino here consists of four contrasting treble instruments: recorder, oboe, natural trumpet in F, and violin.

The first movement makes much use of lively chordal ‘fanfare’ figuration of the sort eminently suited to the trumpet. But one of the movement’s pleasures is hearing how this figuration’s character is transformed when played by the more pastoral oboe, or the softer violin. The movement is relatively long, brilliant, and for the trumpeter, strenuous. (It is said that various prominent trumpeters have had contractual protection against being forced to perform this work! Having had a crack at it myself on one occasion, I can sympathize.)

Incidentally, the “piccolo trumpet in F” seems never to have been used previous to this work–and may not have appeared again until the late 19th century, when versions of it were constructed specifically to use in playing Bach trumpet parts, most emphatically including this one!

The second movement–again, following the normal pattern–has a very different tone. Set in the relative minor key, D minor, a gentle rocking rhythm underpins a yearning three-way conversation among the violin, oboe and recorder. The trumpet remains silent throughout, which was not unexpected–Baroque trumpet concertos usually featured a slow movement in a minor key in which the solo instrument was silent. (The Baroque trumpet was quite limited when playing music in minor keys–so much so that it is often incorrectly said to have been unable to play in minor keys. There are numerous counterexamples in the outer movements of the Brandenburg, however.)

This hypnotic movement ends, as abruptly yet gently as falling asleep, on a D major triad–the ‘tierce de Picardy.’

The third movement then breaks in like a flash of sunlight in a dim room with the solo trumpet cavorting in a triumphant, unprepared F major, as if impatient at its enforced silence. (“As if–,” since in many cases the player will have been cherishing his or her opportunity to rest and regroup.) The overall tone is somewhat similar to the first movement, but lighter and more relaxed overall, with the quadruple meter of the opening superseded by duple.

It’s a wonderful, substantive and uplifting piece–all in less than a quarter hour. I must not be the first to think so, either: the first movement is now to be found outside of this solar system. It is the first musical selection of the famous “golden record” included aboard both Voyager probes. “Out of this world”–literally.

“Great Beginnings” is one of the musical parlor games here at snowonmusic. In this game, the challenge is to identify a well-known piece or movement in the ‘classical’ repertory–given only the first note or chord!

If you’d like to play, do not wait, do not pass go, click on the link below to navigate back to Great Beginnings 1.

It’s the first chord of Beethoven’s Symphony #1 in C. At the time, this beginning was the focus of some critical disapprobation; “My dear, it begins with a perfect cadence upon the subdominant!” complained one aristocratic musical amateur. (Or so, at least, I seem to recall reading sometime in the distant personal past.) Famously, one critic–no-one ever seems to say who, and perhaps the name has been lost over the years–called the symphony “a caricature of Haydn pushed to absurdity.” It’s easy to laugh at that now, but in fact the comment is not without insight: Haydn had in fact enjoyed the musical joke of beginning with a cadence–the musical equivalent of starting a sentence with a period. But it took Beethoven to ‘push’ the joke that bit further by placing that cadence in the ‘wrong key.’

Here’s how the whole phrase makes its way to the dominant–and in the correct key:

GB #2

This ‘great beginning':

How many symphonic works begin with an unaccompanied flute solo? (That could be a parlor game of its own, but perhaps one better suited to a blog where flutists hang out.)

I don’t know the answer to that–off-hand, I can’t think of another example, though I’m reasonably sure that there must be some others–but I am sure that this is the most famous example. Despite the popularity of many of Debussy’s other orchestral works (most notably La Mer), historians have called the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune “Debussy’s most celebrated orchestral work” (1894.) Though not uncontroversial, it was a popular success from its premiere.

Here’s how the flute solo continues:

Blogger James Roe comments: “The melody begins on a sustained c-sharp, a note played on the flute with all the fingers raised, no keys depressed. Debussy, the musical colorist, knew the gauzy diffuseness the flute could produce on this note and used it to great effect, subtly blending the beginning of the piece with the silence preceding it.”

This is another famous chord: one of the first prominent examples of the use of a dominant ninth chord. It comes from the Violin Sonata in A by Franck (1884.)

It’s quietly ironic: the chordal sonority is a dissonance, quite unusual in its time, yet the musical idea is serenely simple. Here’s a little bit more of the introductory piano ‘vamp':

GB #4

And the clue:

This is the beginning of one of the great music dramas of Richard Wagner–Tristan und Isolde.

The first chord has become known as the ‘Tristan chord’, though from a technical point of view it is really an unusually prolonged appoggiatura to a French augmented sixth. (And if memory serves, enterprising historians have found a very similar precedent somewhere in the work of Spohr.)

Even that first cello note–it is to be played on the open ‘A’ string–attracted admiration. Lalo–again I write from memory here–said that it was a sound he had been awaiting for years. Years later the famous conductor Bruno Walter would write about his first hearing of this work in 1889:

So there I sat in the topmost gallery of the Berlin Opera House, and from the first sound of the cellos my heart contracted spasmodically…

GB #5

Clue #5:

This is perhaps the least ‘famous’ of the great beginnings, though it’s drawn from a very-well known, well-loved and respected work by a major composer–Johannes Brahms. Like the Beethoven (and for that matter, the Franck) it’s an example of a non-tonic opening sonority–here, the subdominant chord. The continuation:

It’s the passacaglia theme which forms the basis of the fourth movement of the Symphony 4 in E minor. (This would be Brahms’ final symphony, which I suppose that makes it a fitting bookend to the Beethoven, which opens his very first symphonic movement.)

The Symphony is nicknamed “the Tragic” for its extremely passionate and serious character.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) knew something about elegance in the social sense. But one of his signature tunes, Satin Doll—perhaps partly (or even entirely) the work of long-time Ellington collaborator Billy Strayhorn—also exhibits great musical elegance in the economy and ingenuity of its musical structure. Let’s take a closer look at an eight-bar excerpt. Here it is, notated somewhat schematically:

It’s not hard to see that the first two measures are repeated, transposed up a whole step, in measures three and four, nor that the harmonic rhythm—the rate at which chords change—speeds up in the second line.

Or does it? Looking again, the chords continue to change every two beats, so at the surface level, the harmonic rhythm does not actually change. Yet the harmonic rhythm feels as though it accelerates. Tabulating the changes can make the reason for this perception clearer. Let’s make our table in two-measure segments:

In bars 5 and 6, there is twice as much harmonic information, since the repetition of the first two chords is eliminated and two new chords substituted.

Moreover, there’s a clear logic governing the specific chords chosen. To understand it, we need to understand the concept of the “ii-V” progression in jazz. (For readers who don’t know this numerical terminology for chords, the “ii” denotes a chord built upon the second degree of a scale and the “V” a chord built upon the fifth degree. For example, in A major “ii” would be a B minor chord, “B” forming the second degree of the A major scale, and “V” would be an E major chord, since “E” is the fifth scale degree.)

The “ii-V” progression is very common in all “common-practice” music, as easy to find in Bach as in Ellington. But in jazz it is particularly useful because it so clearly defines a key center, and creates such a strong sense of harmonic motion. In fact, it has become a stock element, used ad lib, for example, as an insertion at the end of a repeated section to lead back to the beginning of that section—a “turnaround.” This ‘stock element’ becomes the basic unit used to construct Satin Doll. Here’s our table of chords, redone in terms of the key to which each of the “ii-V” progressions belongs:

Ellington—or Strayhorn—begins with a “ii-V” that defines the key as C major. We aren’t given the tonic triad, C major, which helps to sustain the harmonic energy at the beginning of the phrase—a tonic chord always tends to act as a ‘ground’ for that energy when heard, and we don’t want the phrase ‘short-circuited.’

The upward transposition in mm. 3-4—we noted that above—then suggests a secondary key area of D. (Tonicization of “ii” (or “II”) is a strategy that Franz Schubert was rather fond of, by the way; it can be observed in the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, among other works.) Again, there is no tonic function actually heard.

Measures 5-6 give us a new implied tonality, G. Notice that this makes a larger scale “ii-V?” The implied “D” of mm. 3-4 would be “ii’’ in the home key of C, while the “G” of 5-6 would be “V.”

The “minor seven flat five” chord at the beginning of measure 5—also known as a half-diminished seventh—suggests a minor, not major key, since it fits naturally into the minor mode, unlike the minor seventh chords which heard in previous versions of the “ii-V.” I suspect, though, that the chord quality has more to do with preparing what we hear next than with the niceties of chordal implication.

For what we get next is tonally surprising. As the table shows, the final “ii-V” seems to belong to the tonally remote key of Db major. Following the established tonal logic, we might have expected a “ii-V” in the tonic key. It would have made a logical, convincing cadence. Indeed, it’s not hard to rewrite the tune to do that:

But it would be a disappointing ending, at least in comparison with the ‘real thing.’

It’s easy to understand why this is a musical ‘plot twist’—suddenly we find ourselves in a distant tonal area. It’s perhaps a bit less obvious why it still makes sense.

Jazz, as an art for which improvisation is highly important, and in which individual expression is prized, has developed many techniques by which common (as in ‘shared’) melodies and lines can be expressively inflected by improvisors and arrangers. One is the concept of chord “substitution.” As I’ve explained elsewhere, a common form of substitution involves using third-related chords—for example, an A minor triad might be used in place of a C major triad. This has a certain logic in that two of three tones are common to both chords, yet the effect can be surprisingly fresh.

A bit more exotic is the “tritone substitution.” It, too, goes back to earlier antecedents—it can be found, for example, in Chopin. It consists of substituting for a dominant seventh chord—say, G7—the dominant seventh a tritone away—say, Db7. This may seem arbitrary at first blush, but makes sense upon reflection: the two most active tones in the chord, the third and seventh, are actually common to both chords (if we neglect a little enharmonic respelling.) For example, G7 has for a third “B” and for seventh, “F.” For Db7, the tones switch: “F” is now the third, while “B”—respelled as Cb—becomes the seventh.

In Satin Doll, then, Ellington has applied the tritone substitution to the entire “ii-V” progression, not just the dominant seventh itself. It’s the perfect musical plot twist, as logical as it is unexpected.

The ‘modular construction’ we’ve been looking at also reminds me in a way of Andy Warhol’s pop-art work: everyday objects—for the “ii-V” is as everyday as a soup can—arranged artfully enough become art themselves once again, momentarily liberated from the banal patina of overexposure.

But Ellington did it first, did it less obviously, and for my money had more fun with it—with Ellington, it’s ingenuity, not irony.

There’s a literary parlor game: can you name a famous novel from just its first word? It sounds impossible, perhaps, but some novels have opening lines famous enough to make this a potentially amusing pastime. For example, for those who know their classic American novels, the challenge word “Call” might elicit the opening sentence of Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.” Or–staying with English, but not America–“It” might well evoke Dicken’s famous “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” from A Tale of Two Cities.

You can see that there are a few conditions needed for this to work as a game. The novel must be well-known, it must have a distinctive opening line, and it must not give away too much (by, say, beginning with a prominent character’s name.) Ideally, there should be only one solution–though that is perhaps not necessary. Jane Austen fans, presented with “It,” would surely recall not Dickens, but the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

It–there’s that word again–occurred to me that the same thing would work with music. Indeed, it might work better, as the first sonority of a piece, notated, actually contains a great deal more information than just a single word, and is more distinctive. In addition to the actual sonority, there’s the relation to the key signature, there’s the language(s) of the tempo direction and expression marks, and there’s the instrumental designation–all can furnish helpful hints. Hence, “Great Beginnings.”

Below, I’ve quoted five beginnings–either of a whole multi-movement work, or (in one case) of a movement of one. Each is a celebrated opening, noteworthy or at least memorable in some fashion. How many can you name?

GB #1
GB #2
GB #3
GB #4
GB #5

I’ll reveal answers in a subsequent post–say, in a week or two. An additional challenge: can you propose any “Great Beginnings” of your own?

For readers who missed the first two parts of this musical parlor game, “WWJD” stands for “What Would Johann Do?”—Johann, of course, being the incomparable J.S. Bach.

The idea is this: in Part One, I present an actual Bach chorale melody, stripped of its harmonization. Any ‘players’ there may be send in their harmonization—emailed Finale files will work, PDFs or JPEGs are fine, too, including cell phone pictures. You can also do as reader ‘thrig’ did: submit via soundcloud (or some similar service) or on your own blog, by simply writing a WWJD comment giving the link.

In Part Two, I give my harmonization. (The ‘house’ always plays! But in this game, the house never wins—although players can win free sheet music downloads.)

Then, in Part Three, we take a look at what Bach did. (Call it an exercise in humility!)

For navigational ease, I’ve made “WWJD” a category so you don’t have to pick through the front page or through archives. Just look for “WWJD” under the “Categories” heading on the left sidebar. Clicking there will bring up all WWJD posts, so you can follow them in sequence. (Though they appear in reverse order; if there’s a way to change the sorting, I haven’t found it yet.)

Submissions to WWJD 1 came from thrig and, of course, the ‘house:’

The melody, as thrig noted in a previous comment, is not hard to find in the Riemenschneider edition of Bach’s 371 harmonized chorales; it’s the very first one. Or part of it, at least—and that’s worth a side-note.

Many Lutheran chorals have been considered to be in ‘bar form.’ The term comes from the German Meistersinger guilds, and has come to refer to a formal pattern consisting of two parts, of which the first (usually shorter) is repeated while the second is not—AAB. There’s a succinct explanation of this at Wikipedia:

(You can also read a wealth of material about the chorales, about Bach and prominent Bach interpreter Glenn Gould, and various other interests of the proprietor.)

Without more ado, the ‘reveal’ of WWJD 1:

Let’s walk through the leading features of this. Bach opens with a five-chord prolongation of the tonic: the melody arpeggiates the G major triad, supported by a subdominant-dominant progression in first inversion.

I followed suit, by luck, inspiration, or just possibly by subconscious recollection. But Bach gets extra points for the artful passing tone figure in the tenor. Note that it’s a ‘consonant passing tone,’ in which a different triad—a root position vi—results from the tenor motion. This never would have occurred to me, because as a modern, academically-trained musician, I naturally doubled the root, not the third, of the IV chord. Bach was more flexible about doublings.

The second complete bar is interesting. I’ve arpeggiated the IV triad, creating a 7-6 suspension in the process. Not bad—but Bach’s version is, unsurprisingly, stronger. The V-vi ‘deceptive cadence’ progression is livelier and more colorful. It also sets up the subdominant on the next downbeat, since in Bach’s version the subdominant has not yet been heard in root position, making it a ‘fresh’ sonority.

There’s another noteworthy feature in the second bar: note how his tenor ‘overlaps’ the bass part on beat two, descending below the preceding bass tone. Modern theory students are usually discouraged from writing any voice overlaps, but this stepwise overlap is not an isolated example within the ‘371.’

(Of course, modern ‘rules’ for part-writing aren’t meant primarily to reflect the historical practice of Bach (or anyone else), though they may be founded upon that practice; they are meant to provide a relatively simple model that students can use to internalize ‘normalized’ common-practice voice-leading patterns.)

But—returning to the point—it is the second phrase where Bach’s version shines the brightest. My version is OK—the bass-line’s design is essentially a descent from tonic to dominant, with the dominant function prolonged by a cadential six-four chord in the penultimate measure.

(By the way, readers wanting to brush up on cadential six-fours can do so at the link below.)

Bach’s version, though, is really and truly magnificent in its elegance. In his version, the motion from tonic to dominant is an ascent from the lower tonic. Its upward sweep generates great momentum leading into the final cadence. The simplicity and (paradoxically) the imagination of the voice-leading are also wonderful: the lower three voices move in parallel first-inversion triads, while the soprano follows a contrary scalar pattern. (Streaming parallel six-three chords had been a popular technique of the early Renaissance, under the name fauxbourdon.)

Again, a couple of doublings result which are not so academically ‘correct’: the doubled fifth in the viio6 (last beat, fifth complete measure) ‘should’ be a doubled third, and the doubled third in the following I6 is generally viewed as doubling option 3 these days. No-body would call them ‘wrong’ (I think!)—but they aren’t the first options we’d teach theory students.

But when you have such strong lines, working so powerfully, you don’t complain about the details of doubling—that is not the priority! Doubling rules are like the “Pirate’s Code” of movie fame, anyway—“more of a guideline.”

But having descended from the sublime to the ridiculous, let me ascend once again, by closing with a realization of Bach’s harmonization for you to hear:

But not the first movement. It gets all the love already, what with that famous “fate knocks at the door/V for victory” head motive, and its very own P.D.Q. Bach spoof, “New Horizons In Music Appreciation.” (If you like, you can check it out at the link below. I’ll wait!)

But the third movement has lots to admire, too. There a just a couple of things to keep in mind as we take a look (and listen) to it.

First, its form: symphonic third movements during the Classical period were generally examples of either of the “minuet-and-trio” or of its derivative form, the “scherzo and trio.” This specimen is no exception, falling into the latter category. The minuet and trio set the formal pattern, though, so let’s look at that for a moment.

A Minuet is in moderate triple meter, and usually in rounded binary form, consisting of a first section—symbolized by the letter A—and a second section. This second section begins with differing material—‘B’—usually in a different but related key, such as the dominant, or (in the case of a minor key minuet) the relative major. This ‘B’ section then concludes with a return to the ‘A’ material, so that the overall form of the Minuet becomes A|BA.

The trio—which may or may not be an actual trio by texture, though it often features lighter scoring—is usually likewise in rounded binary form. It is followed by a restatement of the minuet, making an overall form that is ternary—ABA.

The scherzo follows this general pattern for the most part, but with significant alterations. First, the tempo is usually faster, and the character is different. As Wikipedia puts it, “Beethoven in particular [turns] the polite rhythm of the minuet into a much more intense—and sometimes even savage—dance.”

Second, the form usually possesses ‘irregular’ features, accounting perhaps for the term “scherzo” (Italian for “joke.”) The irregular is the unexpected, and the unexpected is frequently humorous.

Having discussed the form of the scherzo, let’s turn to the second of our points to keep in mind: tonal language.

Classical harmony tends to operate between two polarized tonal functions: the tonic and dominant. The tonic is stability and repose; the dominant, suspense and motion. Other chords, when they are present, are arrayed around this crucial polarity, mediating between tonic and dominant. But they frequently fade tactfully away altogether when not required—and they may not be required for surprisingly long periods of time. This polarization sets up expectations which can become the occasion for ‘play’—for ‘scherzi.’

(By the way, readers wanting to sharpen up on tonic and dominant harmonies in various keys can do so at either of these two articles linked below. Both feature interactive practice exercises.)

But let’s return to the ‘pre-requisites’ of our discussion. The final point I must highlight is the technique of ‘modal mutation.’ As I’m using the term here, it means altering the third of a chord to change it from minor to major (as in the most well-known ‘modal mutation’ idiom, the Picardy third)—or, less frequently, the reverse.

Note that although this theme starts out in as clear a C minor as you could ever wish to see, it quickly veers away toward the relative major, Eb. (The Bb triad ending the cited bit would be the dominant in Eb.) But the idea doesn’t stabilize; it careers wildly, seemingly toward ever-more-distant flat keys, settling with another half-cadence—that is, a cadence to the ‘suspense chord’ of the dominant—this time, in Eb minor. (Yes, that would be the modal ‘mutant’ of Eb major, which it initially appeared the passage might make its tonal destination.)

The extended cadential chord is worth quoting—Beethoven embellishes a structural dominant with a tonic:

This Bb major triad becomes the setup for ‘uno scherzo’—quite literally, a musical pun: the dominant of Eb is modally mutated to a Bbminor—as expressed by the ‘misterioso’ rising theme, where it functions as a tonic triad. A dominant is thus ‘turned into’ a tonic, linked by the common Bb root, just as the contrasting meanings of the words in a verbal pun are linked by a similar sound (assonance.)

As it turns out, this section is the contrasting section of the scherzo, articulated not by thematic differences, but by the contrasting key. The ‘misterioso’ theme—via further extensions and a new transition passage—leads back into the ‘pounding’ theme, once again in C minor; this settles again onto an extended half cadence, this time on F minor.

A similar tonal pun ushers in the ‘misterioso’ theme in C minor, and with it the rounding ‘A1’ section of the scherzo. Beethoven extends the scherzo with a codetta combining the ‘misterioso’ theme, the ‘pounding’ motive, now—significantly, as it will turn out—soft; and a new ‘scurrying’ theme. This developmental music crescendos to a last tutti utterance of the pounding motive, concluding in an abrupt, soft, perfect authentic cadence.

Having traced the scherzo in some detail, we can now move a bit faster, simply summarizing the trio. Though it begins as a fugue—”What would Johann have done?”—it plays out rather closer to the normal rounded binary form than does the scherzo. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s set in the parallel major key of C, in yet another example of modal mutation. Its main idea is a somewhat syncopated unison theme—the fugal ‘subject’—stated by ‘cellos and basses. (This theme has become one of the standard ‘audition exerpts’ for bass, and may be one of the challenging bits that Carl Maria von Weber had in mind when he opined that Beethoven was now “ready for the mad-house.”)

The trio also features some play with extended dominant harmonies, rather as the scherzo does. But it is much more diatonic, rarely straying far from the main key. Self-deprived of piquant tonal contrasts, Beethoven animates the music with syncopation and contrapuntal play.

The real masterstroke is the handling of the recapitulation of the scherzo. The ‘misterioso’ theme returns verbatim, and convention would have us expect the ‘pounding’ theme to do likewise.

But what we get—though at first literal enough, in terms of the pitch and rhythmic structure—is in important ways the polar opposite. The repeated notes are now heard pianissmo, cheeping bird-like on a pair of clarinets, and again in a dry tip-toeing pizzicato, accompanied by short, thin-sounding chords, shot through with silence. Where are our savage horns now?

We get the extended half-cadence, and still there are no horns. We get the codetta, more or less, and there is a tiny bit of horn, but it’s piano too—not at all the same thing we were expecting. The movement proper closes with a solo bassoon whispering those repeated notes hoarsely to yet more pizzicato strings. No horns, nothing above a whisper at all.

A listener could feel a bit cheated…

But then the theme comes to rest on a deceptive cadence, and we know that there is more.

Appropriately, for a movement in which functions are subverted—dominant becoming tonic, the prefatory becoming thematic, and the thematic becoming developmental—and in which the emphasis has often been upon the second structural unit, not the first—we get, unexpectedly, a sustained transition that in effect turns the entire movement into a prologue. At the end of it, we are going to get our brass: and not just the horns, not just the trumpets, but an entire 7-piece brass section, including, for the first time in symphonic history, three trombones.

And their mood is not savage, but festive, as they announce, fortissimo, the definitive triumph of C major. But that would be another story, technically; for the transition leads directly into the fourth movement. (This may be the first time this was done in a symphony; it’s the first really prominent example of which I’m aware.)

But the finale is another story—today, it’s enough to praise the imagination and skill with which this remarkable scherzo serves the larger structure of the most famous symphony of them all.

Reader thrig, of the blog Anthropocene Daze—and what a delicious title that is, by the way—is the sole respondent so far to the challenge of “What Would Johann Do?” I need to emulate him, and ‘show my work.’

Thrig posted the following harmonization of the melody given in the first post in this series:

It’s got a few modern features—notably the way the bass and alto step away from the dominant at the final cadence, creating what ‘looks like’ a vii half-diminished four-three. But as the realization posted at AD serves to document, it’s musically quite serviceable, and the ‘modernisms’ come across as relatively subtle alterations of, or departures from, a predominantly 18th-century style.

There are one or two things a little out of the ordinary in my stab at this, too. Probably the most notable is the use of a ‘retardation’—an inverted (that is, upward-resolving) suspension—in the 3rd complete measure. While this is an idiom that’s taught in theory class, I don’t personally recall noticing it in an actual Bach chorale.

The musical strategy is relatively simple to describe: the first five beats prolong tonic, using a IV-V progression in first inversion. This is followed by a bass arpeggiation of the subdominant, leading to the structural dominant at the fermata in measure 4. The bass then recapitulates the descent from tonic to dominant, the dominant being prolonged by a textbook cadential six-four chord in measure 6.

I’ll admit to having been a bit proud of this, as I contemplated it when ‘freshly pressed.’ The bass seemed to me well-designed and coherent, with the arrival of the dominant caesura effective, and the following descent logical, even compelling.

And actually, I still think it’s pretty good. If you’d like to check out a musical realization, you can hear a faux organ version here:

But–you should see what Johann did!

And you will, with the final post in this installment of WWJD I. (That’ll be coming your way in a week or so, right here in this space.)

In the mean time, would anyone care to join thrig and I in the “WWJD challenge?” If so, just post your harmonization in a comment or an email. You could even email me a cell phone shot of a napkin jotting, if you really want to go all Schoenberg on me. Just go to my website, ispeakmusic.com.

One of the ironies of music genre categorization these days is that Sting’s solo work now tends to be termed ‘soft rock.’

Part one of the irony is that that genre is functionally the successor to ‘easy listening,’ which I think has become more or less extinct. (Correct me if I’m wrong on that, and it’s merely become increasingly obscure and irrelevant.)

Part two is that Sting has consistently challenged genre boundaries, not only by invoking stylistic types at will whenever they serve the narrative purpose of a song’s lyrics—say, the ‘country music’ style of I’m So Happy—but also by using really challenging musical materials, such as composite meters and complex harmonies. These, too, are often related to what a given song is about.

A case in point is I Hung My Head, the second track on the 1995 album Mercury Falling, which, Wikipedia tells us, “marked Sting’s transition from heavier jazz-inspired rock to the adult contemporary* genre.” Although the narrative is set in the old American West, the musical style is anything but 19th century: the original setting of the song is built around a heavily distorted electric guitar riff—one whose rhythm is strangely elusive and unsettled.

The Wikipedia article on the song describes it this way:

The song is written in compound time 9/8. The curious offbeat rhythm has the effect of alternating 5-beat and 4-beat bars. The drum beat is syncopated, on the 3rd and 8th beats.

I conceptualize it a bit differently. Nine-eight time is normally (as the article says) a ‘compound’ time signature, meaning that the beat unit is not a simple note value such as a quarter note or half note, but rather a dotted note value—in nine-eight, the dotted quarter note. The implication is that the measure consists of three beats, each further subdivided into threes: “ONE two three FOUR five six SEV’N eight nine”—or “ONE and-a TWO and-a THREE and-a.”

That’s a very different beast from the ‘curious offbeat rhythm’ we hear in I Hung My Head. My interpretation proceeds partly from the ‘drum beat’, which evokes the familiar rock and roll “back beat” drum ‘hits’ on beats two and four: “one TWO three FOUR.” Here, though, we’ve got an extra eighth note inserted into beat three: “one and TWO and three and-a FOUR and.” Thus the meter becomes a ‘distorted four.’

Transcribed in the resulting ‘composite’ meter, the vocal melody looks like this:

It’s really unusual. Even in styles where composite meter is fairly normal—say, the Rumanian folk music whose melodies Bela Bartok famously collected, and which so influenced his compositional style—it’s much more common to have the ‘augmented beat’ (the one with three subdivisions) fall at either the beginning or the end of the measure, where its tendency to create an accent makes a great start or ending. Inserted in the middle, it’s unsettling, destabilizing.

It’s also appropriate. Like the narrator, we listeners wait for clarity—we, too, have “time to kill.” (An innocent-sounding phrase with a sinister double meaning—“Early one morning/With time to kill” starts first and last verses, framing the entire song.) That ‘time to kill’ is inserted right into the middle of each and every measure for us.

But there’s more. Consider the bass line in conjunction with the melody:

That bass line is part of the guitar riff mentioned above, performed on the lowest two strings of the guitar. (The higher bits of the riff are omitted from the transcription for clarity.) The accented quarter notes ending each bar help to stabilize the meter, setting up the coming downbeat.

But if focused upon—if the listener concentrates on the bass and lets the melody recede into the perceptual background—those quarter notes can induce an alternative metric scheme, a whole new meter. It’s still composite, but now it’s one in which the second beat is the augmented one, and “beat three” arrives not on the 8th eighth note of the measure, but on the 9th.

You might say that beat three of the ‘distorted four’ is perpetually disrupted, torn apart, by this conflict between different layers in the musical texture. Again, it’s unsettling, disruptive.

And again, it’s appropriate: the whole song revolves around a moment which, ‘inserted’ into the narrator’s life, disrupts it—in fact, utterly derails it. And the metric structure I’ve been describing gives us a compelling analog for that—one that helps us feel imaginatively what is felt by the narrator.

In setting a musical text, it doesn’t get much better than that.

*”Adult contemporary is rather a continuation of the easy listening and soft rock style that became popular in the 1960s and 1970s with some adjustments that reflect the evolution of pop/rock music.” –Wikipedia

A 2010 performance with the Royal Philharmonic in Berlin: (Royal Phil) (Many other performances from this tour are also online.)

You can really pick out the bass line; the whole symphonic bass section is playing it. And that guitar riff is still there, if much farther back in the mix. There are a couple of good shots of Dominic Miller, Sting’s long-time guitarist and collaborator, flat-picking it on his white Les Paul.

Johnny Cash version:

A very interesting alternate version is Johnny Cash’s 2002 cover. In that recording, the characteristic meter is changed to straight 4-4, and the harmonies are simplified as well. Some listeners prefer it; Sting is said to have considered the cover an honor. My take on it is that the unsettled, disrupted quality removed by these changes is taken on by Cash’s vocal performance. Readers here can judge for themselves, if they wish.

“WWJD” has become a Christian catchphrase summarizing an ethical test: faced with a difficult decision, one is to ask “What would Jesus do?”

But in the present case–and with all respect to the original case–what I’m proposing is a bit of a musical parlor game: “What would Johann do?”

Bach, that is–Johann Sebastian Bach.

What I’ll do in these “WWJD” posts (for I’m imagining a series of them) is this: in part 1, I’ll present the melody of a Bach chorale.

Readers–should I actually have any–can then submit their harmonizations if they choose, the best of which I’ll present in part 2. (Heck, I’ll even throw in a prize of some sort.) I’ll give my harmonization, just to show I’m not a chicken.

Finally, of course, part 3 will give the original harmonization by the Master. (Hey, if Sherlockians can use that terminology, then so can Bach enthusiasts. JSB was at least historical!)